Which OS for my new laptop XP, W7:32, W7:64??

[gismo]

My laptop died (fans quit and MB overheated) a little while ago and it's replacement was waiting for me when I got home from a trip today. The new one came with XP installed but also has the disks for Windows 7 Pro both 32 and 64 bit versions. I have 4GB of memory and AFaIK, only Win7:64bit will allow all the memory to be used. My main concern is whether or not I'll have any problems running some older apps that ran OK with XP on my old computer. I also have a couple different USB-serial port cables and I don't know if there are any 64 bit drivers for those or if said drivers are likely to be included with Win 7.

Apps:

Office 2000 (I think I have Ofc 2007 around somewhere)
FireFox
Thunderbird
Microsoft Visual Studio (C++ & VB--- the free versions)
RMS Flitesoft (that's gotta work)
plus some development tools for varios PLC hardware. One of those would only work on XP if I limited the memory to 1GB in the boot.ini file.

There's probably a bunch more old stuff that I'd like to have working but most of it was downloaded and there's probably Win7 compatible versions out there by now.

So what if any are the limitations of Win 7: 64bit WRT running older apps and drivers? Is there a "compatibility mode"? Can I download and run a Virtual PC in XP mode?

 

[Cap'n Jack]

Office 2007- no prob, but they really changed the user interface, compared to 2000.

VC++ and VB express- not a problem either.

I can't say about the rest of it...

 

[RJM62]

Is the machine capable of handling more RAM? Win7-64 runs okay on 4 GB, but who knows how long that will be true.... XP-32 used to run okay on 256 MB when it first came out.

What levels of Win7 are included? Win7 Professional and Ultimate both have the capability of running something called "XP Mode," which can be downloaded for free from M$. It's basically virtual XP running on top of 7. It works quite well and should pretty much eliminate any concerns about apps that vomit on 7.

But I like 6 - 8 GB of RAM when doing that, to give the host system, the virtual system, and the apps plenty of elbow room. And XP Mode is only available on Professional and Ultimate. And I'm not sure how it would deal with the driver issues on your somewhat obscure peripherals.

-Rich

 

[Arbiter419]

Office XP is still really nice if you don't want to make the rather drastic switch to 2007 yet...as for RAM, unless you'll be doing any virtual machine-ing, 4GB is just fine. You have to keep in mind that Windows 7 may look like Vista, but it's a LOT easier on resources than it.

 

[gismo]

Is the machine capable of handling more RAM? Win7-64 runs okay on 4 GB, but who knows how long that will be true.... XP-32 used to run okay on 256 MB when it first came out.

What levels of Win7 are included? Win7 Professional and Ultimate both have the capability of running something called "XP Mode," which can be downloaded for free from M$. It's basically virtual XP running on top of 7. It works quite well and should pretty much eliminate any concerns about apps that vomit on 7.

But I like 6 - 8 GB of RAM when doing that, to give the host system, the virtual system, and the apps plenty of elbow room. And XP Mode is only available on Professional and Ultimate. And I'm not sure how it would deal with the driver issues on your somewhat obscure peripherals.

-Rich

I can go as high as 8GB RAM if needed but I'm hoping that 4 GB will be sufficient until 4GB sticks become inexpensive.

 

[RJM62]

I can go as high as 8GB RAM if needed but I'm hoping that 4 GB will be sufficient until 4GB sticks become inexpensive.

That should be fine for now unless you're virtualizing, using any of the systems. But either of the 32-bit systems won't quite see all of it.

The main thing you have to be concerned with, then, is hardware compatibility.

Have you tried running the upgrade adviser from XP with all the devices attached?

-Rich

 

[gismo]

That should be fine for now unless you're virtualizing, using any of the systems. But either of the 32-bit systems won't quite see all of it.

The main thing you have to be concerned with, then, is hardware compatibility.

Have you tried running the upgrade adviser from XP with all the devices attached?

-Rich

Unfortunately the only computer I had that was running XP died prompting the new purchase. On the positive side, so far I've been able to get everything to work under Win 7/64 except for one program that didn't work properly on the XP laptop (although it did work on an old desktop running XP).

 

[RJM62]

Unfortunately the only computer I had that was running XP died prompting the new purchase. On the positive side, so far I've been able to get everything to work under Win 7/64 except for one program that didn't work properly on the XP laptop (although it did work on an old desktop running XP).

If it's Win7 Pro or Ultimate, try downloading XP Mode from M$. It's free, but only available for those two versions. It's also been my experience that some legacy software actually runs better on XP Mode on top of Win7 than it did on native XP. Go figger.

XP Mode is one of the best things M$ has come out with, in my opinion. It's basically what I told them they should have done with Vista, back when it was still "Longhorn." If I could run Windows on top of Linux, I told them, they should be able to run legacy Windows on top of Windows. But they had to bow one last time before the altar of backward compatibility before they realized I was right, and Vista was the result.

-Rich

 

[gprellwitz]

It's basically what I told them they should have done with Vista, back when it was still "Longhorn." If I could run Windows on top of Linux, I told them, they should be able to run legacy Windows on top of Windows. But they had to bow one last time before the altar of backward compatibility before they realized I was right, and Vista was the result.

-Rich

I'm Rich, and Windows 7 was My Idea!

 

[Henning]

My new machine has W7:64 with 6GB Ram and I haven't had any issues except one. When I'm using Firefox and I go to a .pdf browser page, it "stops" that page and I have to refresh multiple times before it'll download, and if it's a big pdf page, it never will. When I get these pages, I just pop the URL into IE and I have no problem.

 

[RJM62]

My new machine has W7:64 with 6GB Ram and I haven't had any issues except one. When I'm using Firefox and I go to a .pdf browser page, it "stops" that page and I have to refresh multiple times before it'll download, and if it's a big pdf page, it never will. When I get these pages, I just pop the URL into IE and I have no problem.

Possibly a conflict between the FF version and the Adobe Reader plugin?

 

[TMetzinger]

Win7 pro in 64 bit version. XP mode takes care of the few things that weren't ready for Win7. I've got 6 GB of RAM and the OS has been super stable - the best version of Windows ever, and I've stopped using the Linux partition on my laptop.

 

[gismo]

If it's Win7 Pro or Ultimate, try downloading XP Mode from M$. It's free, but only available for those two versions. It's also been my experience that some legacy software actually runs better on XP Mode on top of Win7 than it did on native XP. Go figger.

XP Mode is one of the best things M$ has come out with, in my opinion. It's basically what I told them they should have done with Vista, back when it was still "Longhorn." If I could run Windows on top of Linux, I told them, they should be able to run legacy Windows on top of Windows. But they had to bow one last time before the altar of backward compatibility before they realized I was right, and Vista was the result.

-Rich

I have XP Mode installed but I still can't run the one app (OnTop V7) I wanted. The program complains that the video mode isn't compatible and I haven't found any way to change it. Any ideas? The normal method of right clicking on the desktop to get to the properties/settings box works but the choices are severely limited. I can't even see how to increase the screen resolution to what's supported by my laptop's LCD.

 

[RJM62]

I have XP Mode installed but I still can't run the one app (OnTop V7) I wanted. The program complains that the video mode isn't compatible and I haven't found any way to change it. Any ideas? The normal method of right clicking on the desktop to get to the properties/settings box works but the choices are severely limited. I can't even see how to increase the screen resolution to what's supported by my laptop's LCD.

What video mode is it asking for, and what are you actually using?

-Rich

 

[gismo]

What video mode is it asking for, and what are you actually using?

-Rich

It appears that the problem is the installer. All it says is "Severe No Compatible Video Mode" right after the installer begins. Looking at the video settings in XP Mode I see that if I go full screen it gives the pixel dimensions of my display and runs in 16bit color mode. Neither can be changed AFaIK although the screen size does vary if you aren't full screen.

 

[RJM62]

What kind of app is this?

Hardware acceleration and several other features are not available in XP Mode because the host, not the VM, owns the GPU and the monitor. It really was made for legacy business apps, not games or other GPU-intensive apps.

Have you tried running the program using XP Compatibility Mode rather than XP Mode in Win7? (You'd think they'd come up with a less-confusing name for one or the other...)

-Rich

 

[jesse]

What kind of app is this?

Hardware acceleration and several other features are not available in XP Mode because the host, not the VM, owns the GPU and the monitor. It really was made for legacy business apps, not games or other GPU-intensive apps.

Have you tried running the program using XP Compatibility Mode rather than XP Mode in Win7? (You'd think they'd come up with a less-confusing name for one or the other...)

-Rich

It's a flight simulator - not surprising it doesn't work.

 

[taters]

I run Win 7:32 ...runs FSX Sp2 + addons and Xplane cats ass.
In flight sims its all about CPU's + obivous RAM reqs.